We’ve discussed at length the destructive effects of Fox News. We’ve marveled at the network’s ability to sell “up” as “down” and “black” as “white” to a significant portion of U.S. citizens, thus undermining a pillar of democracy — an informed citizenry — and compromising the concept of “truth” itself.
The Fox News effect a deliberate and decades-long project that culminated in the installation of a pathological liar in the White House. Predictably, the pressure to reconcile said liar’s continuous string of falsehoods with reality has caused the Republican Party and its media arm to become even more unmoored from the truth.
This is bad news for the republic, obviously. But I wonder if the party’s wholesale estrangement from reality might cause it to make dumb mistakes that fatally dent its credibility with anyone outside the Trump base?
Exhibit A is the current furor in wingnut circles over a partially declassified memo filed by National Security Adviser Susan Rice on her last day on the job. Here it is (image via TPM):
Now, a sane person would read that and think, “Holy shit! The outgoing president was wary of sharing information with the incoming president’s staff even before the incoming administration’s National Security Adviser and foreign policy adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their nefarious contacts with foreign nationals and before the former campaign chairman and his deputy were charged with conspiring against the United States!”
I mean, that highlighted paragraph is pretty stark, right? It straight-up says the Obama people were concerned about sharing information about Russia with the Trump people because they didn’t trust Team Trump to safeguard national security. Subsequent events, including Trump blurting out top secret information to the visiting Russian foreign minister and ambassador a few months after taking office, sorta validates the Obama team’s suspicions. Not to mention the aforementioned guilty pleas and charges of conspiracy!
But that’s not how the memo is being received on the right. Republicans have always had a weird antipathy to the no-nonsense Ms. Rice. (Can’t imagine why! Not.) They spent millions of dollars and countless hours pretending that a set of bland talking points from Ms. Rice’s shop after the Benghazi incident was evidence of a treasonous conspiracy.
Their takeaway from this Rice memo is that it is evidence that the Obama team was out to frame Trump for collusion with Russia and to cover their tracks by asserting on the record that the investigation had been handled “by the book.” Here’s a representative sample of how the memo is being treated from a Fox & Friends segment this morning — one of four so far today on this topic:
Senators flag ‘unusual’ Susan Rice email on Russia probe from Inauguration Day pic.twitter.com/E7x1Y48R10
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) February 13, 2018
Forget the Fox News audience for a moment. (Actually, forget them forever; they’re unreachable, so fuck ’em.) The danger here — for Trump and his enablers — is that the feedback loop hasn’t just ensnared rage-grandpas lolling on recliners nationwide. Chuck Grassley caused the memo to be released, complete with the damning contemporaneous account of the Obama team’s suspicions about Trump’s inner circle, because Grassley thinks it’s such a red-hot gotcha.
Lindsey Graham appeared on a later Fox & Friends segment to reinforce that message. And if he’s not live-tweeting Fox & Friends already, Trump will eventually get around to advancing the same narrative, probably in gloating tweets in which he refers to himself in the third person and in scare quotes.
Grassley, Nunes, Graham — and Trump — have become so caught up in preaching to the choir that they’ve forgotten it’s not just the congregation who hears them. This was evident in their attempt to make Carter Page a national security overreach martyr, and it’s even more evident with the Rice memo.
Not content to crow about it on Fox News, Grassley indignantly issued a letter to Ms. Rice demanding answers to a string of questions about the memo. Grassley may get more of an answer than he expects.
japa21
As satby pointed out in the last thread. Today is paczki day in Chicago. I bring this up only to point out that there is a commonality between paczki day and Fox News. The spelling of paczki bears the same relationship with its pronunciation (poonch-key) as Fox News does with reality.
SFAW
Traitors, or collaborators, every fucking one of them. That includes YOU, Fishmouth.
Yeah, I’m being hyperbolic. What of it?
japa21
Also, too, I think I heard that Grassley said something to the effect that Obama said it should be played by the book, but it doesn’t seem to have been played by the book. Therefore this is all part of a coverup.
Everything with these people is projection. They just assume everybody plays by the same set of corrupt rules they do. They can’t imagine people actually being honest.
wvng
Betty, your take is the same as mine. The fact that Grassley and Graham could possibly read that memo as a win for their team is astonishing and demonstrates how deep they are in the rabbit hole.
chris
Out for a walk the other day. Steve was thinking about an ambush but didn’t. Bert just likes to run.
BruceJ
Well I thought Chuck Grassley WAS pretty much a rage-grandpa…and this is working. The GOP is actively protecting a president who at the very least is a Putin-led stooge, and at worst an active Russian asset, in a White House that was full of actual, known Russian assets, all so they can accomplish their agenda of destroying the tattered remnants of the New Deal and busting out the US for the profit of their 0.01% masters.
Kay
Another fake Susan Rice scandal. Hmm. I wonder why they always target Susan Rice for fake scandals.
The biggest one was Benghazi and that of course wasn’t just FOX. It was mainstream news media. Led by Jake Tapper.
rikyrah
They must all go to jail for treason ?
gene108
@japa21:
Sometimes the projection and overreach work in their favor. Benghazi attack was during Obama’s first term. He debated Mitt Romney on it in 2012.
But continuing a crazy partisan attack on Hillary Clinton over it for four years kept it as a major issue in the 2016 election to replace Obama,
Don’t underestimate the ability of this sort of projection to set the media narrative.
Peter
More like “white” as “saintly and wholesome” and “black” as “black black blackout black”.
Kay
Has anyone died overseas since Trump has been President?
I wonder why that’s not “proof” or wrongdoing anymore? Because Benghazi “scandal” was complete bullshit, a tragic incident political media turned into a 12 month scandal because Republicans told them it was a scandal?
It must be like the national security implications of Clinton’s server. No longer vitally in the public interest when Trump has everyone and his brother wandering around without a security clearance.
‘Tis a mystery!
MattF
I guess that pretty soon we’re all going to be scandalized by reports that Susan Rice punched her husband. I’ll take bets that there are pictures of him with a black eye.
Kay
Kyle Griffin
Verified account
Like he gives a shit. Who’s gonna make him? There has to be a specific law barring behavior or it’s A-OK. They will NEVER self-police.
clay
@Kay:
Just some US soldiers in Niger. No one important enough to hold hearings about. //s
No Drought No More
Look what happened to the state republican party in California, and take heart. Because Californians aren’t anything special, they possess no political insights denied their fellow Americans. But they sensibly concluded years ago that the state GOP is off its rocker, and in self defense deserted it for its treacherous malfeasance in power and the lunatic candidates it perennially fields for state and federal offices.
Jeffro
I wonder why Graham and Grassley don’t just call Obama to testify under oath? After all, he’s the great anti-Trumpov-conspiracy ringleader, isn’t he? Let’s have the whole nation watch and hear Obama walk the country through important/relevant events that took place between the summer of ’16 and January ’17.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Hundreds of nobodies.
gene108
@Kay:
So was Whitewater…didn’t stop the political media from reporting on it front and center for years…
Their reason had something to do with vetting a President and therefore his past business dealings were fair game.
They then ignored this reason, when Bush, Jr ran and no one bothered to see if he got undue favors because he went from one failed business to another and kept failing upwards.
Seems to me the media are Republicans and they want to clear a path for permanent Republican one party rule. I can think of no other reason that they can be so dumb for so many decades.
gene108
@No Drought No More:
California is a majority-minority state. White people are less than 50% of the population. Makes a difference.
Good luck having Republicans alienate voters with 85% plus white people over anti-immigration or racist appeals.
Frankensteinbeck
As I’ve said before and will keep saying, the Fox audience demands to be lied to, and went looking for someone who would. There may be a spiral effect making things worse, but they catered to an existing market.
This applies to Republicans in Congress and the media figures regurgitating their talking points. They looked around until they found lies they wanted to believe.
It’s a problem on the left (coughsnowdencough). It rules the right absolutely.
Kay
@gene108:
You guys all think it’s ideology but I think it’s much more boring. It’s self-interest and ordinary arrogance. Jake Tapper did the interview with Susan Rice so he flogged the hell out of the fake scandal. Go read that interview. Rice recited diplomatic boilerplate but Tapper wanted a scandal so he made one up. The NYTimes broke the email scandal so because they’re the NYTimes it HAD to be a threat to the Republic!
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
The US is getting close. This is not a coincidence.
@gene108:
Eeyup. The coverage of Ebola says it all.
Adam L Silverman
AMB Rice already answered questions on this before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when they decided to look into Congressman Nunes’ claims of an unmasking violation by AMB Rice and other Obama Administration officials. Senator Burr, the Chair of the SSCI, was not only satisfied with her testimony, but then trashed Nunes’ claims. Senators Grassley and Graham are out of their lane. This is an intel committee oversight issue, not a Judiciary Committee or the Judiciary sub-committee that Graham chairs oversight issue. Moreover, as BettyC indicates, the memo in no way, shape, or form indicates what Senators Grassley or Graham or Fox News claim it does. That Senator Grassley is this stupid doesn’t surprise me. Senator Graham is usually smarter about this stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: It wasn’t diplomatic boilerplate. The Benghazi talking points for that Sunday were not created by AMB Rice’s shop. They were the result of an Interagency staffing, but it is widely understood and reported that these were the talking points that the IC, specifically the Agency wanted, because it was the Agency that hid a listening post at the consulate and it was the attempt to/need to protect what was at that listening post (destroying equipment and files) that contributed to the KIAs at Benghazi. The talking points came out of then DCI Petreaus’s shop.
Kay
@Adam L Silverman:
I heard that at the time. Jake Tapper took his suspicion of a scandal and invented one. he fit the facts to the narrative he wanted.
When you’re “investigating” it’s VITAL that you find something! They found NOTHING. Continuing to behave as if he found something when he did not just goes against the whole idea of process.
I know they’re SUPER savvy and they smelled a rat but at some point you have to find the rat! If you don’t you STOP casting aspersions. There were TWELVE Benghazi investigations. Nada. Not shit. That should have been pointed out.
Adam L Silverman
This is an interesting response to this BS:
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: The US won’t be majority-minority until the 2040s (but young children already are or will be within the next few years). Through intense ethnic cleansing efforts and making the US into a hermit kingdom they can put it off for a few years.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: That and the fact that the GOP has figured out how to play the media like a banjo at an Ozark Hoedown.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Yemen and Niger, Kay
kindness
Fox is Pravda for the right wing. You know if liberals were the same as right wing nut jobs (we aren’t as shown by) Murdoch would have been assassinated many years ago. Liberals don’t have the rage. Liberals don’t have the desire to kill so. Vengeance isn’t so strong in our bones as it is in theirs.
Trump is doing his best to change that however.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: …But you know what other large state is already majority-minority? Texas.
Which is not to say that its electorate is majority-minority, or that this will automatically make them Democrats. Hispanic turnout there is notoriously difficult to mobilize.
gene108
@Frankensteinbeck:
The US as a whole maybe majority minority in the next few decades, but it won’t be even throughout the country.
Montana, Wyoming, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky, etc will all still be very white and they each get two Senators.
I doubt we will get CA demographics throughout the entire country.
*********************
What made Benghazi stand out is an ambassador was killed for the first time in decades. Bush, Jr had a lot more embassy and consulate people killed than Obama, but Amb. Stevens death made Benghazi unique and standout from “ordinary” attacks on our foreign offices, like the one in Egypt a day or two before.
terraformer
@Kay:
Like he gives a shit. Who’s gonna make him? There has to be a specific law barring behavior or it’s A-OK. They will NEVER self-police.
Right. One of the first things Dems should do (and I know there’s a LOT) once they get back into power (unless elections are suspended…) is to codify into law all of the “norms” and “traditions” that Trump and the Republicans have seen fit to dismiss and ignore. Things like tax returns, emoluments, forcing the other party to hear and vote on another party’s SC selection, etc.
The list of things to fix is long given the smash-and-grab they’re doing now, but since they haven’t been observing norms and traditions, we need to enshrine them into law.
Achrachno
@Kay: Isn’t there some way for citizen lawsuits to enforce this stuff? It seems like pretty blatant misappropriation of public resources.
Brachiator
My sister has started to watch Fox News just to laugh at the lies. Sends me emails just amazed at the shit that they peddle.
But it stops being funny when nut job Congress folk demand hearings and investigations based on stuff that they should know is not true.
Thanks in part to Fox, we now have permanent political witch hunt by conservatives.
gene108
@kindness:
The amount of fever swamp talking points Bernie supporters used to regurgitate on Facebook leads me to believe liberals are not immune to propaganda, if properly targeted.
No one has bothered to try in the same way conservatives are targeted.
Leto
@Kay: @clay: This happened a year ago: Raid in Yemen: Risky From the Start and Costly in the End
This alone should’ve garnered as much coverage as “BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI”. It did get attention for a while, including his grieving widow who was in attendance during his first SotU (or whatever that briefing to Congress he did), but then it was quickly replaced by literally every other horrible fucking thing this administration continues to do.
Repatriated
@Kay: Look, the Iran hostage crisis worked to get rid of Carter, and the GOP spun 9-11 into most of a decade of electoral success.
Benghazi SHOULD have worked for them too. It didn’t, which proves there MUST have been some nefarious conspiracy. They just had to find it.
Jeffro
Meanwhile, Omarosa is beginning to talk: Pence Is So Nuts, He Thinks Jesus Talks to Him. No, Literally.
Y’all Would Want Trumpov Back if You Had Pence as Prez
The only thing funny about this is, Omarosa’s tacitly admitting that president* two corinthians isn’t religious, and that people who are Pence-level religious are scary. On that, I think we can agree.
kindness
@gene108: Bernie supporters pleaded with the Russian bots to run Democracy into the ditch. Bernie had to know and did nothing to stop it. While I may like some of Bernie’s stances, Bernie can go do something anatomically untendable with rusty farm equipment because he helped elect Trump. Indirectly by not telling his most fevered supporters they were being played by Russians.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: Good. The more Dems we have running FOR EVERY DAMNED SEAT (contest them all), the better off we’ll be. Everything from Dog Catcher to Congress. All of them Katy, all of them.
Leto
@Jeffro: Yes, I’m sure that his base will listen to a female POC about how bad their white xtian savior is, and how he doesn’t really care for them. Yup, any day now…
rikyrah
Trump camp ties to Russia a transition quandary for Obama team
Rachel Maddow shows how a newly released e-mail from Susan Rice illuminates the challenge for Obama officials trying to decide how to communicate with Trump officials they knew were under investigation.
StringOnAStick
My office’s Bernie sycophant is moving to India to “continue my spiritual journey”. She popped off with every Russian bot propagated meme during the election and on election day was angry at the phone calls from HRC’s campaign to get her vote, spitting out ” I’m NOT with her!”. I told her Bernie had told his followers to vote for HRC and her demeanor was an instant switch to oh yes, must do what Bernie said to do. It was cultish and weird.
I can guarantee she won’t have her act together enough to vote while in India plus I heard her telling a patient yesterday that she and the boyfriend may never return to the US. Well, that’s one less Bernie drone voting here, so that’s good and our office is losing the Boulder-esque, more spiritual than thou flake who has gotten away with not pulling her weight and demanding month long vacations as her price for staying. I think the boss is feeling used and like a schmuck for enabling this stuff for so long; I glad he finally opened his eyes.
Jeffro
@Leto: I don’t think anyone expects the GOP base to listen to or care about what she has to say – I just thought it was funny. Well, if it were a movie it might be funny. Folks like this actually running our country, not so much…
bemused
@Adam L Silverman:
The concept that people can do their jobs impartially and firmly believe it’s their duty as American citizens to disregard party politics completely in their work is absolutely foreign to Republicans.
japa21
@bemused: Which goes into what I said earlier. Because they automatically would look at what is best for themselves, not America, they assume Dems are the same.
Doug R
@gene108:
Why do you think Bernie or busters were almost all white guys?
Their concentration on emails and feeling cheated and hatred of Hillary and dismissal of the “southern vote” all speak to the same misogyny and racism just sublimated in another direction.
Both Bernie and trump had the “trade is bad, m’kay?” shtick and both “neglected” to release their tax returns.
If Bernie wasn’t a Russian asset, his campaign was certainly infiltrated by some.
Leto
@Jeffro: Maybe in 20 years we’ll get some type of dark comedy out of this period. Or some type of “serious” award bait piece. Though I think a remake of The Manchurian Candidate, with this current admin, could be done.
Immanentize
@Kay: I always assumed the right wing had its freak out about Benghazi because, IN FACT, the attacks were launched at least in part because of the racist Made-in America video as Rice correctly stated. Just because organized wrong doers took advantage of that opportunity doesn’t mean that US racists created the opportunity for mass protests and violence in the Muslim world.
bemused
@japa21: @japa21:
They have to think and project that Dems have the same, self-serving motivations to get what they want. It’s all about winning or losing for them.
kindness
@Doug R: Actually I have many female Berniebros in my FB feed. I unfollowed most of the worst of them (kept them as ‘friends’ though). Some of the one’s I’ve kept I keep wondering why I still haven’t unfollowed them as they still pop off with stuff they should know better over.
Doug R
@kindness: Well, over 50% of white women voted for a p*ssy grabbing misogynist so there’s a fair bit of self haters out there. A subset of those would be Bernie or busters.
gvg
@Jeffro: hmm, Omerosa’s judgement is IMO suspect and she evidently wants public attention. I think it’s possible she is right, but I’ll wait for more reliable reporting before getting worried about Pence.
We all worried about Pence in the beginning but now we mostly assume if Trump goes, he’ll get taken out too so I am not as worried about it as a year ago. I suspect the story is meant to be entertaining.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize: also, Graham seems to have some personal beef with Susan Rice. I’m still trying to figure out how her email to herself, from January 2017, is a scandal. Apparently they’re still trying to gin up the FISA warrants on Carter Page were a huge scandal. I think Graham is completely amoral but not stupid (as opposed to Grassley), I can’t believe he’s trying to make Page into a martyr.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Matt McIrvin:
AZ, too, very much so.
I’m well aware of the longstanding and systemic aspects of oppression here, but my own involvement with attempting voter registration and GOTV in the barrios for more than a half dozen election campaign seasons was more than frustrating and dispiriting. I stopped doing it because I got bone-tired of not just being blown-off, but being threatened. Don’t need that shit from people we’re only trying to help.
“Demographic shifts” aren’t nearly the panacea for advancing liberal governance in the U.S. that many are hanging their hopes on. Not from my ground-level experience.
Cluttered Mind
@Jeffro: That’s probably precisely why they won’t ever call him. The last thing they want is for Obama to have a chance to go on the record with all this stuff.
sukabi
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: on Graham and Grassley… I think it’s more likely they are being blackmailed which is why they’ve latched on to their ridiculous claims about Rice & Obama.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@sukabi: Perhaps. But neither one of them need that to be such disingenuous assholes. They’re Republican officials, it comes naturally.
Brachiator
@Doug R:
Nationally, more than 50% of white women typically vote Republican. Self hating? Don’t know. Maybe they just have a different set of values.
And as has been noted often, when you dig into specific states, women votes vary dramatically, especially if you look at states outside the South. In California, for example, 2016 election, 57% of white women voted for Clinton.
Jeffro
@gvg: Trumpov has to go no matter what sort of wackaloon Pence is. Justice demands it (as does basic human decency, etc etc)
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Jail doesn’t stop organized crime bosses from continuing their crimes.
Something a bit more permanent is needed.
Brachiator
@Doug R:
Because it’s not true? One random news story:
The most obnoxious and public Berniebros often are dudes, but there may be more to the story.
Shana
@Jeffro: I’m jewish so this is all pretty mysterious to me, but can anyone explain how it is that these Christians, or any Christians for that matter, seem to know that it’s God telling them things instead of just them thinking about stuff and coming to a conclusion? How does it manifest to them that it’s God and not just “well I thought about it and decided that I would or wouldn’t do X”?
Brachiator
@Shana:
Didn’t God speak to Moses? From a burning bush of all places?
All religions seem pretty dopey from some angle or another.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: First of all, OH NOES NOT TEH ESTABLISHMINTZ LEEDERZ WHO WASH THE BRAINZ! The word “establishment” can FOAD and DIAF together.
Second of all, that’s pretty much saying that Sanders is popular among… Democrats. Gauged by “approval,” which isn’t the same as “preference.” A lot of people who _approve_ Sanders ALSO approve Hillary Clinton. The Bernie Bro phenomenon, if it existed and I think it did, would be measured by the demographic composition of the Sanders vote _as a preference_ _within_ Democrats and _compared to_ the Clinton vote _within_ Democrats.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: In the Hebrew Bible God did a lot of talking, but then he seemed like He got withdrawn, like He’d had something to drink that affected His mood. He’s not that chatty anymore.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t know. “Approval” vs “preference” starts playing games.
But because Bernie never made it to the nationals, there are not a lot of exit polls that break down detail info.
But again, here is the proposition:
Yougov primary analysis
No gender breakdown.
To be clear, Sanders ain’t my candidate. I checked him out and dropped him early. But I also saw a lot of enthusiasm for him in California. And the people I saw attending his rallies were not just a buncha dudes. One office where I do work, young Latinos were consistently big Bernie supporters, male and female.
Again, a lot of the most obnoxious asswipes were Berniebros. But I have not seen anyone produce data to support the claim that his supporters were mainly white guys.
But if Bernie ever becomes a Fox News contributor …
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
He was on sabbatical until Joan of Arc came looking for some inspiration.
LurkerNoLonger
@Shana: They never consider that it’s actually the devil talking to them either. Like, “hey maybe I should reconsider listening to the voices in my head.”
(((CassandraLeo)))
@gene108: Well, there were those Macedonian teens (IIRC) with a fake news site who quickly stopped pitching their poison to liberals because it wasn’t getting any clicks. Our side might not be completely immune to it, but we’re certainly more so than right-wingers.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Approved by and Voted for are not the same thing, not at all. Exit polling would be somewhat better, but people do lie to pollsters all the time. I tell them I’m a Republican sometimes, just to get to f**k with them.
J R in WV
@Shana:
I can explain. These people have never had a thought in their lives, ever. Never. Anything that comes into their mind is sent from G-D directly, and they have to take action based upon G-D’s will, which put that inkling into their mind.
Do you see it now? Has to be from G-D, since they were taught not to think at all – NOT AT ALL – as very young persons. Makes Kkollage really hard, to. ;-)
ETA: And as someone remarked above, HOW do they know it isn’t the DEVIL putting those thoughts in their heads??? They can’t tell the difference, can they??
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: My best friend’s wife is a devout christian and a missionary. In my experience it just so happens that everything God tells her to do perfectly coincides with what she wants to do. Really, it’s a miracle that they are always in sync like that.
Yes, I am being snippy here. But that’s how she sees it. We should do this because god wants us to.
SWMBO
Lily Tomlin used to say,”If we talk to God, we’re praying. If God talks to us, we’re schizophrenic.” Probably true.
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Not as much detailed exit poll data for primaries, because it is expensive and nobody usually cares as much when candidates are still sorting themselves out. But I also pointed to another article that clearly showed that Bernie had a significant amount of younger nonwhite support.
This is not a huge deal, except for the sake of accuracy. But in terms of hard data, it seems as though God told Doug R that Bernie supporters were almost all exclusively white males, and you know how reliable something like that is.
Bonnie
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the right wing gang are equivalent to Tokyo Rose. They engage in propaganda and brainwashing.